Trump Administration Live Updates: Bondi to Seek Release of Some Epstein Material, but Faces Hurdles

New York Times

18-07-2025

The rapid succession of House votes showed the industry's growing influence in Washington, where lawmakers had declared it 'crypto week' on Capitol Hill.
The cryptocurrency industry reached a major milestone in Washington on Thursday, as Congress cleared legislation outlining the first federal rules for stablecoins, a popular form of digital currency.
A bipartisan vote in the House to approve the bill, known as the Genius Act, sent it to the White House for President Trump's signature, now expected on Friday. He has promised to make it the first major piece of crypto legislation signed into law in the United States.
But even as the industry and its backers notched their first big policy victory, the fate of a potentially more consequential digital currency regulation bill still working its way through Congress was in doubt.
The House on Thursday also passed the Clarity Act, sending the Senate legislation that would establish cryptocurrency market regulations that industry executives have championed for months.
At the heart of that measure are provisions that would weaken the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to police crypto and instead hand more control to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That could shield the industry against the kind of aggressive enforcement the S.E.C. undertook in the Biden administration, when regulators filed lawsuits against a procession of major crypto firms, and instead empower a commission that is seen as much more friendly to it.
The Clarity Act 'has been absolutely the most important thing we have been pushing for,' said Kara Calvert, a top policy official at Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange and a longtime target of the S.E.C.
Representative French Hill, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said the package of legislation would deliver on Mr. Trump's vision to 'make America great again by bringing capital back here, pursuing innovation here and leading in digital payments, just as we have for decades in global capital markets and in finance generally.'
The measures passed over the vociferous opposition of most Democrats, who argued that the legislation would hand the crypto industry a lax set of regulations it had written itself to benefit wealthy players, including Mr. Trump's own family, as they sought to enrich themselves.
Representative Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, derided the action as 'a vote to give Trump the pen to write the rules that would put more money in his family's pocket,' one that would cause 'consumer harm' and 'plant the seeds for the next financial crisis.'
Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, said the action was one of compliance by Republicans to 'do what makes profit for the crypto bros, including Donald Trump.'
But it drew support from a large bloc of Democrats, including those who argued that some regulation of the cryptocurrency industry was better than none, given how quickly crypto markets were growing.
'The only question is whether we will begin the hard work of developing regulation or refuse to begin,' Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, said in a speech on the House floor about the Clarity Act.
Under the bill, she added: 'Consumers will finally be protected by the same sort of guardrails that protect investors in other sectors of the economy.'
The big bipartisan votes on the legislation reflected the industry's success in cultivating powerful allies in government. Crypto firms financed a network of super PACs that spent more than $130 million backing pro-crypto candidates in the 2024 election. Mr. Trump is also a vocal crypto enthusiast, with an array of digital currency businesses that have bolstered his family's wealth — a point of frustration for many Democrats who support the industry's ambitions but do not wish to be seen as enriching a Trump family venture.
The bills had appeared to be on a glidepath toward easy passage in the House this week, but action stalled when a small group of conservative Republicans staged a revolt, blocking debate and throwing the House floor into chaos. They demanded stronger assurances that a third bill, which would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing its own central bank digital currency, or C.B.D.C., would make it into law.
Image
In the Biden era, the S.E.C. launched a wide-ranging crackdown on the crypto industry, suing top exchanges such as Coinbase.
Credit...
Gabby Jones for The New York Times
That measure also passed on Thursday, sending it to the Senate. But it was not clear whether it would draw enough bipartisan support to survive in the Senate, where it would need the backing of at least seven Democrats to scale procedural hurdles and come to a vote.
Struggling to put down the internal revolt, House Republican leaders promised to attach the C.B.D.C. ban to the annual defense policy bill later this year, yoking it to legislation that lawmakers in both parties regard as a 'must-pass' item. But it was not clear whether that would be successful, and some conservative critics remained skeptical.
'The number one thing that is not happening today is a ban on a central bank digital currency,' Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said during an appearance Thursday on 'War Room,' a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon. She argued that the issuance of a C.B.D.C. would expose the public to financial surveillance. 'This means the ability for the government to take control of your digital bank account where all your money is and turn it off,' she said.
She mocked the deal her party's leaders had offered, claiming it would 'not be honored,' and was one of 12 Republicans to oppose the stablecoin bill on Thursday.
The road ahead for the rest of the crypto package was uncertain. Senators have signaled they wish to draft their own version of a crypto market structure bill, and that debate is likely to be complex and potentially lengthy. It's unclear whether Democrats would be prepared to support such an industry-friendly bill, one that is reviled by consumer protection groups.
'It's a horrifically bad piece of legislation that stands ready to eviscerate our existing securities laws,' said Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has testified before Congress about crypto regulation.
Still, even after the blowup in the House, the rapid succession of votes on Thursday showed the industry's growing influence in Washington, where lawmakers managed to salvage what they had declared 'crypto week' on Capitol Hill. All week, the industry flexed its muscles with a marketing blitz that included ads at bus stops in Washington and crypto-themed chocolate bars in vending machines set up around Capitol Hill.
Image
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking to the press outside his office at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Credit...
Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The votes in the House this week capped a series of legal battles waged by top crypto firms.
In the Biden era, the S.E.C. launched a wide-ranging crackdown on the crypto industry, suing top exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken. The agency argued that virtually all cryptocurrencies constituted securities, like shares of companies traded on Wall Street, and that crypto companies were breaking the law by offering them without proper disclosures.
The S.E.C.'s legal offensive threatened the crypto industry's survival in the United States. Last year, several top firms banded together to finance a super PAC called Fairshake and two other affiliated PACs, which embarked on a spending spree aimed at stacking Congress with pro-industry legislators.
That effort was remarkably successful. As soon as Mr. Trump took office in January, the crypto world's legislative priorities started moving forward in Congress.
Last month, the Senate passed the Genius Act, which gives a government seal of approval to stablecoins, a type of digital currency designed to maintain a constant price of $1. At the same time, legislators in the House introduced the Clarity Act, the industry's most ambitious legislative effort.
A central aim of the Clarity Act is to lock in some of the gains that the crypto world has made under Mr. Trump. In recent months, the S.E.C. has dropped its lawsuits against crypto companies, but the agency could theoretically revive that effort under a future president. The industry wants to ensure that does not happen.
If the Clarity Act passed, 'we'd definitely be boxed out of bringing any cases for past misconduct,' said Amanda Fischer, who was a top S.E.C. official during the Biden administration. 'It would retroactively bless all the conduct of the crypto industry.'